Over our three weeks here, we’ve been dedicated to providing you with a living but accurate experience. We have grown as people together and our skills in language, teamwork, and independence grew along with it. We are truly happy to see our home and family again, but are sad to leave our temporary home and family that we have created life-long lasting memories with. The hard work we spent here and fun times we had will stay with all of us. We are excited to see each other again one day. Blog Han out.

• Cody, Henry, Maggie, Maya, Myles, Natalie, and Roya
  

After weeks of preparing, we finally performed our Oshibai play, GojoTarou, a spin on the classical Japanese folktale, Momotarou. Our production was a huge success and it seemed like our families enjoyed it as well. We also had the opportunity to perform our Chiri research project and educate our families on our Chihou that we have enjoyed so much time with. We ended off the night with a final dinner, filled with delicious food and heartfelt speeches as we wrap up our time at Academy!

Today is the final day before the final day. We started our day bright and early (as usual), but today, we finally performed our student-audienced and pedagogic Chiri (region) Project. Through experiencing the 6 major regions of Japan, we had the honor to participate in a jocular Kahoot, created by us, the students. After our ENTERPRISING run through of the Chiri Project, we had large sections of the day cut out for us to wrap up the finishing touches for the Oshibai (play) coming up tomorrow… We are as pleased as punch for everyone to join us tomorrow! In between Oshibai preparations and the Chiri Project, we were graced with our final “guest” lecturer, Emma-sensei! We had the opportunity to work in groups to explore the different traditional holidays celebrated in Japan through different workstations that touched upon their respective holidays, like origami, games, and more!

Today after having a very productive AM language class, we had the opportunity to meet a past sensei and RA from the Academy, Emily-sensei. She first gave us an intriguing and fun lecture about Japanese art, and even gave us a sneak peek into our sensei’s and senpai’s past when they were at this Academy. She then spent lunch, PM language class, cooking, dinner, and oshibai (play) prop making with us! Today was also our last cooking class with Rie-sensei and we made dango (a Japanese dessert made out of mochiko flour with sweet toppings)! Multiple students said how much they loved her sakura jelly that she even gave us the recipe for. After dinner, we put all our effort into creating props for oshibai to impress all of the parents!

Today we had the honor of the Japanese Embassy visiting us! They informed us of different scholarships and study abroad programs in Japan. We all were able to ask questions about these new and interesting opportunities available to us. Through this, we even had the opportunity to eat lunch with the Embassy's Education Councilor, Education Coordinator, and JET Program alumni, and gain more personal details as to how their experiences went. Following this, we finally got to take a look at the location for where our Oshibai (play) is going to take place, allowing us to block out how the official play is going to turn out! Wrapping up our final preparations for the days to come, we delved deeper into our Chiri (region) Research Projects, adding final details, finishing scripts, and starting to practice the official presentation. To finish off the day, we attended a teaching session led by Sana-sensei on the practices of Japanese book-binding. With our newfound knowledge of the subject, we were able to conglomerate all of our magnificent haikus into one big book. This was a genuine gift to all of us in which this will serve as a long-term memento for all students of the Japanese Academy! Thank you Sana-sensei!

Following the daily AM Class, we attended a Sangaku (Traditional Japanese Math) lecture hosted by Dr. David Clark, a professor at RMC. The passion that he exuded was infectious, to the point that it allowed for a deeper and more intimate connection to the history behind Japanese Math. After further honing our Japanese skills in our PM language class, we were able to work independently at our leisure up until the Chiri (regions of Japan) Project. To cap off the day, we had the joy to attend our very own Clarise-Senpai’s lecture on the Neighborhoods of Japan. By taking us on a tour of the various towns to demonstrate the individual pop culture, each one illustrated a further understanding of the amount of variety in Japan!

Today we are celebrating a Japanese festival that only happens on the seventh day of the seventh month. This festival is Tanabata!! We began our day by getting ready in traditional Japanese yukatas where we then headed to the actual festival part filled with gacha, games, arts and crafts, and karaoke. After finishing our student-led festival, we made our way to the fountain to take group photos. Finishing off our group photos, we headed to dinner, outdoing everybody in our path with our fancy yukatas. Later, we headed to our Himitsu (secret surprise), where we were able to witness a taiko drum performance by the River City Taiko group. Through this cacophonous demonstration, we were then allowed to participate in a workshop, in which we were able to play the taiko drums ourselves, and perform our bon odori (a kind of dance performed during summer festivals). It was super rewarding to see how these past few weeks of preparation have paid off!

After free time in the morning, we began our P.M. classes where advanced students practiced their konbini(convenience store) etiquette,  intermediate students practiced directions, and beginner students re-taught what they had learned so far in the Academy. Later we directed our attention towards finalizing our script for our Oshibai and started blocking out scenes. We gave preparation for Tanabata(summer festival) one last push for the festivities tomorrow. Through this preparation we demonstrated our artistic skills by decorating all the classrooms and creating mosaics on the blackboards. During preparation, one student said, “While planning for Tanabata was stressful, in the end it will all be worth it!” We are all so excited for Tanabata and can’t wait to share it with our fans!!

Hello, everyone! I'm taking up a little space on the blog here to talk about student masking. We had a few students who seemed to be coming down with a cold, so we requested all students mask up for the next few days, as well as do some 消毒（しょうどく - disinfecting) on all the door knobs, faucets, light switches, etc. Here at the Academy, illness is a threat to students' ability to participate in activities and learn properly, and can even be the cause for a student having to leave the Academy early. With that in mind, I'm proud of the efforts the students have made to keep each other and themselves safe. I'm sorry it's impacting the beautiful pictures on the blog that the students are working so hard to produce, but I hope that we can ask for everyone's understanding! Thank you!

Starting the day with back to back Am classes, where all the classes came together and had a shopping spree hosted by the intermediate class. Products ranged from mystery milk to origami flowers with many in between. This excitable day allowed the different classes to intertwine through productive and fun activities as well as learn common Japanese shopping phrases. We then embarked on a sushi making journey hosted by Rie-Sensei and the cooking han (group). Every student had the opportunity to create their own customizable sushi roll. One student even said, “I felt safe with the Sushi”. We are all excited to bring this new skill to our families at home. After creating our sushi and finishing dinner, we then headed to a joyous lecture hosted by blog han leader and our own RA, Malia Senpai. She led a discussion about fairytales and even showed us her own kamishibai, with her fun filled drawings telling traditional japanese fairy tales! We all loved it very much and wanted to eat all the knowledge up to give future generations!